SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Accidentally in Love
(惹上冷殿下/Re Shang Leng Dian Xia/Provoking the Evildoing Cold Highness)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello! I know it hasn’t been long but I just binged this drama in a couple of days because it was really cute and short and I couldn’t stop!
A friend of mine recommended it to me and since I don’t watch a lot of Chinese dramas I figured I’d give it a try. From the first impression of the title poster to the opening theme sequence to the actual story and characters, I will say from the start I really enjoyed it. Sometimes you just need something short and cute and simple and enjoyable 🙂
I say short because even though there are 30 episodes, the episodes are only 20 minutes long which is very unusual for a Chinese drama! But it really fitted the format of the series and it did make it easier to binge because after each episode I just wasn’t finished with it yet.

Summary: the story is about a girl called Chen Qing Qing (played by Sun Yi Ning), who grew up in a wealthy household. Since her parents’ early deaths she has been raised by her grandfather and excels in a lot of fields, from mathematics and sociology to music and drawing. She especially enjoys drawing comics. The story starts on the evening before her arranged wedding, and going through a picture book of her parents, she suddenly has a vision or dream about her parents. They appear before her and tell her how proud they are of her. Then, they tell her that they wish for her to be happy and follow the life she personally desires.
When Qing Qing wakes up the next morning she takes her life into her own hands – she escapes her own wedding and flees to the town and university where her parents met and studied together, hoping to both find out more about her parents there (she doesn’t actually know a lot about them) and to follow her own path. She disguises herself so her grandfather’s guards who followed her wouldn’t be able to find her and after some initial complications, she is able to get herself enrolled in the university, be it under her disguise.
On the other hand, we have teenage popstar idol Si Tu Feng (played by Guo Jun Chen). Despite being very loved and adored by his fans because of his looks and talent, he is very cold and not very amicable. He finds himself often wanting to escape his idol life and just be free.
Feng and Qing Qing meet when they’re both on the run from their respective guards and pretend they’re a kissing couple in an alley. This leads to their first actual but accidental kiss.
Initially, they don’t get along very well and there are some misunderstandings between them. However, when Qing Qing enrolls in her university, she finds out not only does Feng attend the same college, they’re also in the same class AND she’s assigned the seat right next to him.
The series follows the relationship between Feng and Qing Qing as they go through several hardships together and eventually fall in love with each other. Several other side characters include Feng’s best friend Gu Nan Xi (played by Ma Li), his childhood friend Lan Xin Ya (played by Cheng Mu Xuan) who’s also in love with him, his former friend now-turned-enemy Lin Yi Yang (played by Zhao Yi Qin) and Qing Qing’s roommate and best friend Zhang Fang Fang (played by Zhou Mo).
Of course, Qing Qing has a lot of secrets since she’s under constant disguise. Will she be able to keep these secrets even after things between her and Feng become serious and several people are determined to do anything in their power to sabotage their relationship?

Let me just elaborate on Qing Qing’s secrets. The thing is, she assumes three different identities in the story. The first one is her real self: long hair, elegant dresses, the rich girl she was raised to be. In order to gain attention, she has no choice but to go back to her actual look a couple of times to get what she wants (as her disguise also makes her stand out less). One time she joins a competition to star in one of Feng’s MV’s to win money to help out Fang Fang, and she has to resort to her normal look to gain the attention at the audition that she needs. Even though this is how she actually looks, she takes the name Qing Shen in her pretense to fool Feng and the others.
Her second disguise is the one she assumes when she runs away from home and the one she has on most of the series: a short curly wig, glasses and painted freckles on her face. She wears a lot of bright, colorful clothes and acts extrovertly and determined towards basically everything. For this disguise, she uses her real name Chen Qing Qing, and in the end she realizes that this initially fake personality has opened up a new side of herself and the free spirit she always longed to be. Her third identity is that of anonymous cartoon artist Hebiancao. She creates cartoons about Feng and makes them into online comics that get very popular with Feng’s fans.
So basically, Feng gets to know her as the quirky bespectacled curly-haired Chen Qing Qing who claims to come from a poor background.

What I like in Chinese dramas is that they always make every scene look so damn adorable. All the colors of the backdrop, the layout of the rooms and settings, the clothes – everything seems like a comic book. I don’t know if the building shown as a campus is an actual campus but man, that looks like one magical place to study. The characters were also designed as types, which again added that element of animation to the series.
The cold idol, the quirky geeky girl, the quiet gentle best friend, the bitchy mean girl, the bad boy with a secret soft side, etc. It reminded me a bit of My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend in terms of how the layout and the settings looked and how the characters were written as type characters.

Gu Nan Xi was the typical nice best guy friend who was always there to root for his friends. Even though he is the first one to discover Qing Shen and Qing Qing are the same person and even develops a crush on her as well, he still roots for her to be with Feng. The running gag was that he was sometimes treated like a fool by Feng and he would curse out his best friend saying that ‘he owed him a girlfriend in his next life’. He was a genuinely sympathetic character from the start, just like Fang Fang.
I actually really liked Fang Fang even though I feel like the writers didn’t fully go the distance with her character. She was very introverted and quiet, wanted to stay out of trouble, and even when she would have to take risks trying to help Qing Qing, she never turned against her. Even when Qing Qing eventually tells her the truth and shows her her real appearance, she doesn’t get mad even a little bit. Besides that, she has her own little budding romance going on with rumored bad boy Lin Yi Yang, who for some reason keeps treating her nicely. Lin Yi Yang used to be best friends with Feng and Nan Xi, but after something terrible happened to their mutual friend in the past, he has always blamed Feng for it.
Here’s the deal: Feng, Nan Xi and Yi Yang used to be a group of friends together with a girl named Lan Xin Yu (Xin Ya’s older sister). One time, Feng and Xin Yu were in a terrible accident in which their car fell into the water and Feng was rescued and Xin Yu wasn’t. After that, several misunderstandings were created: One, Lin Yi Yang always blamed Feng for the accident and Feng turned into a cold person because he felt this blame too. Two, Feng promised that he would ‘take care’ of Xin Ya after her sister’s death and Xin Ya has since then interpreted this as that Feng is in love with her and will marry her and always ‘take care’ of her. And here something went terribly wrong.
Xin Ya is the queen bee in college, together with two followers she initially serves as the typical ‘mean girl trio’ that always seems to get Qing Qing into trouble. I found her both insufferable as hilarious; there were seriously humorous moments in her scenes and acting, just in the absurd exaggeration of her behavior. However, as Feng gets closer to Qing Qing, she gets more determined to drive them apart and even calls in help from Queen Witch (as I called her) Yang Lanting (I can’t find the name of the actress anywhere o_o). She is also an old friend of the guys and supports Xin Ya in her quest to get rid of Qing Qing. In the end, Lanting has a really bad influence on both Xin Ya as Feng.

Although the entire series was pretty much colorful cuteness wrapped up in episodes, in the last 5 episodes there was a moment where suddenly something very dark happened and I found it kind of disturbing. I was really enjoying how happy and easy the story was, no major or unnecessary drama, when there was a conflict people would just say sorry and make up etcetera. But suddenly, Xin Ya started acting up. After Feng openly announced his relationship with Qing Qing in front of all his friends, Xin Ya gets so depressed she actually takes a bunch of sleeping pills and nearly kills herself. Shocked by the event, Qing Qing is also suddenly called by her grandfather who is really sick and she needs to go back home to him for a while – which was the WORST timing ever. She left Feng alone and vulnerable at the worst moment ever. With Qing Qing gone, both Xin Ya and Lanting had all the room they needed to emotionally blackmail poor Feng into staying with Xin Ya. Heck, even Xin Ya’s mother joined the game. It was sickening what happened, you could just see Feng crumble under the guilt. Ever since the accident with Xin Yu, he has been particularly vulnerable when it comes to guilt and they used this against him. They didn’t even care about what he wanted, he just had to sacrifice everything for Xin Ya because otherwise ‘she would hurt herself again and you don’t want that, do you?’ I honestly lost a little faith in humanity in that 1,5 episode.
I just hope people know they can’t actually do this, they have no right, no nothing to do this to another person. Xin Ya obviously suffered from some sort of attention disorder so I was first just frustrated by her immaturity, but then it seemed like she honestly didn’t even realize what she was doing to Feng and that she too was being manipulated by Lanting. Lanting apparently told her that if she hurt herself again, Feng would stay by her side forever. I mean, the award for the most rotten person goes to…
I’m just glad Mu Nian told her off at the failed wedding, he just said everything I was thinking. Yes, the emotional blackmailing went to the extent of forcing Feng into marrying Xin Ya. It was not okay.

I haven’t even mentioned Hua Mu Nian yet! Hua Mu Nian (played by Yan Hao Yuan) is also a student at their university, he’s part of the Student Association or whatever it is that Qing Qing joins to gain more information about her father. He has pink hair and in the beginning it really seemed like he was the only gay character in the show, but then suddenly he falls for Xin Ya and I was sad because it would’ve been nice to see an openly gay character in a Chinese drama and I was starting to believe it was finally happening… sigh, I guess not.
Anyways, he was great and I loved him and he said all the right things.

Anyways, Lanting was an actual witch and I was happy to see her go. In the beginning I just thought she was on Xin Ya’s side and therefore was only interested in her point of view, but in the end she actually showed a truly ugly part of herself by manipulating both Xin Ya to physically hurt herself and Feng to stay with Xin Ya. I was so angry when Xin Ya’s mother had the nerve to say ‘I’ve never blamed you for Xin Yu’s death… but I can’t lose Xin Ya as well’. So, basically saying it was his fault and she wouldn’t let him get away with it again.
I just felt so sorry for Feng, he had no one to save him from that situation and even Qing Qing didn’t help. That was one of the two moments I was annoyed by Qing Qing. She knew the situation was hard on Feng and he cared for Xin Ya as a friend. Even though I agreed with her when she was like ‘omg you’re going to fall for her manipulative actions?’, she did show no consideration or empathy whatsoever for the situation Feng was being pushed into and she only became selfish.
The second time I got annoyed was when Feng got this super exclusive chance to train in the States. Even though it was an amazing opportunity, he was hesitating because of Qing Qing. At the same time, Qing Qing gets the opportunity to study in Japan to become a comic artist, but she flat out refuses because of Feng. When Feng finally gathers the courage to tell her, she doesn’t even let him finish and just gets angry that he also didn’t flat out refused because of her. I mean, I’m sorry, are you actually surprised he was hesitant to tell you after you got your amazing career choice? Of course she would be lonely, but she had no right to stand in the way of his dream. She had no right to just assume he would give up on his dream for her.
The first thing she actually said was ‘What about me?’ and that pissed me off so much! Luckily, like several times before, it turns out that she has the habit of lashing out before actually thinking about it, so she needed some time and did call him to say she went too far and he should go.
However, of course, in the end – on the way to the airport – Feng realizes he really can’t do without Qing Qing and he decides to stay.

One of my favorite parts of the series was when Feng had to film a video underwater for his new album. Ever since the accident with Xin Yu, Feng has been terrified by getting into water and the idea of drowning.
Qing Qing takes it upon herself to help him overcome this fear and I loved this so much. The things she did for him were so adorable, especially the one where she brought him to the beach and told him to sing while looking at the water because singing would make him less afraid. And of course the one where she made him stand in the square and the water fountains would come out of the ground and she started to dance around him to show that the water wasn’t scary. This part was so heartwarming, I couldn’t even.
My other favorite moment was when Qing Qing hijacked Feng and Xin Ya’s wedding. I was just waiting for her to make a move, even though she was far away she knew very well Feng was not doing okay and it was already obvious she was going to do something as she called in the help from Feng’s fans. How she entered the hall all like ‘I object!’ and then released all those handshake vouchers (they were fan vouchers to shake hands with Feng for 5 seconds) in the air being like ‘I have enough vouchers to hold your hand for the rest of your life, you can’t deny me!’, I loved it. It was so quirky and so Qing Qing.

The build-up in their relationship was really nice and natural. They took their time, and even though their actual confession is not until in the latter half of the series, their growing affection for each other is already apparent from way earlier. They went through so much together and in the end they were just the most adorable couple.
I was surprised even the whole thing when Feng found out about Qing Qing hiding her true identity took such a short time! I was convinced this would be the main ‘drama’ moment of the series, but he got over it so fast! So nice!

One last thing: I just couldn’t understand how people didn’t see Qing Qing as pretty. I actually found her prettier as her quirky disguise than when she was not in disguise. I guess for all the animation elements, the fact that she wore glasses just meant she was categorized as ‘not pretty’? But to create this great contrast that suddenly when she came to class as her true self, everyone was suddenly flocking to her because ‘she was suddenly super pretty’ and then when she went back to her disguise they stopped even though they by now knew she was the same person? It was kind of weird, but again, I guess it was partly to emphasize the cartoonesque nature of the story.
It didn’t make sense to me, Sun Yi Ning is pretty no matter what disguise. I really liked seeing the different sides of her acting.
And Guo Jun Chen’s floppy ears are adorable. I had to say it.
Oh, and! The opening theme is really cute. I loved that they used it as the song Feng wrote for Qing Qing, the song fits them so perfectly!

I would’ve liked to see a little more development in the relationship between Fang Fang and Yi Yang. Even though it was established that they started dating, I would’ve liked to see at least one kiss. I mean heck, even Mu Nian and Xin Ya kissed! Although by accident.
I did really like the last part where Yi Yang came into a cafe where Fang Fang was having coffee with a friend and he would just take that friend’s coffee like ‘Are you sitting here (aka Get out, I wanna sit here)?’ and Fang Fang was like ‘I’m so sorry, he just always acts like this’, like he was a badly behaving puppy. They made a really cute couple and I would’ve liked to see some more moments between them in-between all the Feng and Qing Qing stuff.

Honestly it felt like watching Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo all over again. That drama healed my heart and it was just cute and fluffy and romantic and lovely and even the ‘dramatic’ parts where just passing ships that went away without too much ado. I really enjoyed watching Accidentally in Love. I would definitely recommend it for a breather of lovely romance.
I wish to find more Chinese dramas like this, these are the ones I can take even though there was still dubbing over the original voices and the usual. But it actually didn’t bother me in this case! There is still hope! The acting was also good, sometimes there were some exaggerated things but that just fitted really well with the kind of story that it was. It needed the animation element, it needed that occasional bizarre humoristic element to make it. It wasn’t the kind of drama that needed actual heavy themes or ‘drama drama’. It was great and enjoyable the way it was.

I’ll be back soon! I now make a schedule how many dramas I watch in a certain amount of months and I still have room for series I can finish in October so I’ll just have to determine which one is next! Stay tuned!

SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

Sungkyunkwan Scandal
( 성균관 스캔들 / Seongkyunkwan Seukendeul)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10

Hello~ Back with another review and this time I watched a classic that has been on my list for a long long time. I’ve wanted to watch this but never found the time or wasn’t in the right mood, but I chose that it was time.
What also helped was that recently I saw the Korean movie ‘Burning’ and rediscovered my love for Yoo Ah In, so that was an extra motivation.
I really liked going back in time and watch an oldschool type 20-episode drama. I have to admit though, that it took me a while to get into and some details from the first episode have already started to fade in my memory. Despite this, I will try to summarize and critique the series as vividly as possible.

Let me start with a summary.
Sungkyunkwan Scandal takes place in the late Joseon period, and focusses on Sungkyunkwan, which were the university quarters of the capital in which only scholars were allowed. And only men could become scholars.
Besides special occasions, women were prohibited from entering the grounds.
The main character of the story is Kim Yoon Hee (played by Park Min Young), who – after the untimely death of her father 10 years earlier – now has to somehow fend for her family consisting of her, her mother and her sickly younger brother. To earn more money, she disguises herself as a man and helps out transcribing books at a local bookstore. Her talent for literature and writing is very unusual for a girl (since girls weren’t supposed to even learn how to read and write), so she has no choice but to hide her true identity. One time, the bookstore owner gives her a very risky job – provide a cheat sheet to an aspiring scholar who is taking the entrance ceremony to Sungkyunkwan. However, during her mission, she accidentally approached the wrong scholar, Lee Sun Joon (played by Park Yoo Chun/Micky). Although confronted by him afterwards, she gets away with it.
But urgency for a fair future arises when her family becomes so needy for money that her mother is even willing to marry Yoon Hee off as a concubine to the Minister of War. However, another opportunity arises for Yoon Hee to escape in the middle of the night (her mother and brother help, I don’t remember the details anymore >_<) to enter the Sungkyunkwan entrace test. While it wasn’t her first intention to actually enter the university, the king himself is so impressed by her literary wit in the exam that he insists she enroll.
And so it happens that Yoon Hee, under the name of her brother Kim Yoon Shik, enters Sungkyunkwan to become a scholar. There, she becomes friends with Lee Sun Joon, who becomes her classmate, their other roommate Moon Jae Shin (Yoo Ah In) and fancy-dressed playboy Gu Yong Ha (Song Joong Ki). They face many trials in their friendships and scholarly ambitions, mostly caused by the student body president and his group of followers. The student body president Ha In Soo (played by Jun Tae Soo), is also the son of the Minister of War, and he is determined to sabotage Kim Yoon Shik and Lee Sun Joon’s progression within the university, but they keep winning.
Slowly but surely, Lee Sun Joon and Kim Yoon Shik start having more than just brotherly feelings for each other, but of course homosexuality is more than prohibited in Sungkyunkwan; it’s unheard of.
Lastly, there is the case of a secret uprising to go against the king amongst some of the ministers and this all links back to the reason why Yoon Hee’s father and Jae Shin’s brother were killed 10 years ago.

I would like to emphasize again how much I enjoyed watching an oldschool drama from 2010 with everything that was still wrong but enjoyable about K-Dramas back then. They’ve progressed so much in the drama industry, but it’s still nice to watch something like this – it made me a little sentimental.
The flashy acting, the extreme close-ups (eyes, lips etc.), the tacky soundtrack… Still loved it, though.

The main part of the story revolves around these four friends, and among that around the growing romantic relationship between Lee Sun Joon and Kim Yoon Shik.
Of course, a lot of things happen in the 20 episodes. Mostly activities within the Sungkyunkwan tradition which require the scholars to face off against each other in some kind of tournament, whether it’s a written test or an archery competition. In every case, the student body president conjures up a plan to make sure the quartet of friends doesn’t win, but consistently fails. In this way, it was almost like watching a typical show with a typical bad guy who always tries to defeat the good guys but always loses. Ha In Soo was basically Draco Malfoy in late Joseon times.
Ha In Soo also has a younger sister, Hyo Eun (played by Seo Hyo Rim), who falls in love with Lee Sun Joon and almost gets engaged to him. By the time she starts to pursue him, Sun Joon is already falling for Yoon Shik, and although he initially agrees to marry her to get rid of his feelings for Yoon Shik, he ultimately calls it off when he finds he can’t ignore how he feels.
And then there’s Cho Sun (played by Kim Min Seo), the most distinguished gisaeng (I still don’t like the word ‘prostitute’ as a translation) who falls for Yoon Shik, of course under the impression that it’s a guy.
It is later revealed that Cho Sun is also a hired assassin who works for the Minister of War to stir up trouble and make people think the mysterious rebel thief called the Red Messenger is a dangerous rebel.
As it turns out, the Red Messenger is actually Moon Jae Shin, and he doesn’t kill anyone – he’s only out to warn people and rebel against the people responsible for his older brother’s death.

In the last couple of episodes, the quartet of friends is summoned by the King to help him with a pressing issue: to recover the late King’s will that went missing when Yoon Hee’s father and Jae Shin’s brother were supposed to secretly deliver it to the palace but were struck down on the way there by hired guards. Yoon Hee then finds out what truly happened to her father and that it was all the Minister of War’s plan to work against both the King and the Left State Minister (Sun Joon’s father).
Following a lead of literary clues which Yoon Hee is smart enough to decode, she eventually finds the will. To be clear, the will is the key to the King’s dream to move the capital elsewhere and start a country where everyone is equal (many of the Ministers are against this). Just when this will is found, the truth about Yoon Hee’s identity is brought to the surface, the King finds out, and in order to protect her from being used as blackmail by the Minister of War, he decides to burn the will but declares that he will still keep dreaming about this dream of creating an equal Joseon.
I believe it was something like that. He burned the will, claimed that it wasn’t recovered to the Council and Yoon Hee was able to remain at Sungkyunkwan (the Minister of War was arrested for giving the order for murdering the two people 10 years ago etcetera).

I would now like to give some comments on the casting.
I knew all the main actors but it was really nice to see them in this drama.
Park Min Young is growing on me with every drama I see of her, although actually I’ve only seen Healer (lol). But I loved her in Busted! and she seems like a very cool person in real life. I think this was a very good role for her since she revealed different layers to her character, both as a woman and a man.
I’ve seen Micky Yoochun in a historical drama before (Rooftop Prince, which is great) and I really liked his drama The Girl Who Sees Smells, which (gasp) I just found out is the last drama he did in 2015. I know he went to the army at some point but I haven’t heard anything from him since then, is he back yet? What’s he been up to? He usually doesn’t leave a very big impression on me, but I think he was cast well in this role of uptight ambitious scholar who slowly starts to loosen up and become more human.
As I mentioned before, one of the reasons I wanted to watch this drama was because of Yoo Ah In – I won’t make it a secret I have a slight celebrity crush on him – and Jae Shin was possibly my favorite character in this drama. The unpredictable rumored rebel nicknamed ‘Geol Oh/Crazy Horse'(?) who also turns out to be this mysterious rebel thief wanting vengeance for his brother’s death. All tough and mysterious, but when he’s faced with a woman he gets the hiccups. I mean, who even thought of this? I love that person. Through the story – pretty much after he discovers Yoon Shik is a girl – he starts developing feelings for her too and tries everything he can to protect her, but sadly he is the second male lead in this love triangle.
I only know Song Joong Ki from Descendants of the Sun, but it was really funny to see him as such a dandy in this drama. In the beginning he seemed kind of creepy perverted and occasionally even a little annoying to me, but his character grows a lot and he got a lot of character backstory and development and in the end I just started to love him too. Because behind that ever so confident smile and flashy clothes, he was actually covering up the fact that he wasn’t an actual noble family scholar. And he still risks being exposed for it when it means getting his friends out of trouble. That’s what I call a loyal friend.
I’ve seen Seo Hyo Rim before in Me Too, Flower, where she was this typical lady, and it was fun to see her act so brightly as a little spoiled princess in this drama. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her when we all knew her love for Sun Joon was going nowhere. I liked her character, she never turned bad like her brother. I have to say I didn’t even completely dislike the Minister of War either. He was just consumed by his greed for getting higher up and everyone who could help him with that looked down on him. Apart from that, he really cared about this children and always took their side, mostly when it came to protecting his daughter’s honor.
I didn’t realize Kim Min Seo was in this drama until I looked closely; I’d seen her in a couple of series before but she was always cast as the bitchy/jealous second female lead (The Moon That Embraces The Sun, Baby-faced Beauty). It was nice to see her as a good character for once, the Joseon look suits her very well.

The build-up in the growing feelings between the main couple is very slow, just the K-Drama way I like it. It takes about halfway through the series before Sun Joon realizes he sees Yoon Shik as more than just a roommate, but it all starts when he sees ‘him’ dressed as a woman during one of their missions. After that he just can’t see Yoon Shik as a normal guy anymore.
I really liked it when they finally confronted each other, Sun Joon accidentally finds out that Yoon Shik is a girl and he is just relieved. No unnecessary drama ‘you lied to me all this time nuuu’, but just ‘oh hey you’re a girl, well this is convenient, now I don’t have to feel weird for liking a guy’. And their romantic gestures and secret meetups and kisses were really adorable. This is what I like about K-Dramas, the old-fashioned tacky but adorable romances.
Honestly, I felt a little bad for Moon Jae Shin, but he saw soon enough he didn’t stand a chance and even though he was obviously bothered by it a little, he gave his friends all the space they needed. I wanted to hug him so many times. Then again, I wouldn’t mind hugging Yoo Ah In many times either, lol (sorry not sorry).

This won’t be a very long review, even though it took me some time to finish because I took a break after the first three episodes. But I think the story and the characters were all pretty well established. In the end, there were no loose ends, they wrapped everything up nicely and I don’t really have any main criticisms. I had a lot of stereotypes in the characters, but that’s what made it so animating. Nothing was rushed, all the characters received development were needed, and no one was only ‘good’ or ‘bad’. In the end, even some of Ha In Soo’s followers turned on him because they just couldn’t ignore that what he was doing was wrong, everyone had a conscience.

I might think of more to write later, but overall I very much enjoyed watching this and I was very eager to see the development of Lee Sun Joon and Kim Yoon Shik and how everything would work out when all the different truths came out.
What I thought was funny was, when in an important time in their relationship, the news arose that Sun Joon’s father might have been responsible for Yoon Hee’s father’s death. And I found it so satisfyingly mature of the relationship they were in that they didn’t immediately turn against each other. I mean, there’s lots of series were one bit of news like that is enough to instantly break a couple apart or suddenly make one party say ‘I can’t be with you anymore’. But that didn’t happen, their first instinct was to figure out the truth together and I think that’s what made their relationship so mature and very realistically written. There was no unnecessary drama, when conflict would arise they would always just figure it out within one episode and always get back together because their friendship was strong enough to hold. Some modern-day drama characters could learn from this; even in Joseon times, when drama was REAL (look at the unfair treatment of women) and the rules were to be abided by or you would literally by killed or tortured, people just talked stuff out.

I liked how the series was established as a ‘slice of life’ impression of scholars in Sungkyunkwan in this period. Sometimes in historical dramas I feel like they don’t really take it seriously and the way they talk doesn’t differ that much from how they talk in modern-day dramas (at least, it sounds pretty much the same to me). In 100 Day Husband someone even makes a heart mark with his fingers one time, I was shook when that happened! And of course there is Hwarang, I won’t even talk about Hwarang, I couldn’t take it seriously for the life of me.
In this drama, they took the historical credibility very seriously, even the way of talking was distinctively old-fashioned. I like it the best when I can completely be immersed in how they walked and talked during that period.
There’s a reason I love historical dramas, they give me so much lessons in Korean history, it’s so interesting! Especially when it’s based on true empires and royalties.
I will continue to watch more historical dramas since they bring me so much joy and I might also one day re-watch The Moon That Embraces The Sun, my first ever and all-time favorite historical drama that got me hooked on historical dramas in general. When that time comes, you can expect the review on my blog! No guarantees though, it all depends on my mood and my ‘yet to watch’ list is still longer than ever. I almost can’t afford re-watching stuff, lol.

I have one more thing to say, and that’s how progressive I found this series, not only for a story taking place in Joseon times, but also for a drama from 2010. Although I usually dislike standard tropes in K-Dramas, this time I realized one thing I like about the ‘girl-dresses-up-as-guy’ trope – it’s actual proof that people fall in love with a person, and not necessarily a gender.
In dramas sporting this trope, the main guy always falls for the pretend-guy at some point, and then he feels weird at first but then somehow gets over it by thinking ‘screw it, I clearly like this guy and I shouldn’t suppress my feelings’ and then they find out that it’s actually been a girl all this time and he feels kind of relieved. But my point is, he falls for a person regardless of whether it’s a guy or a girl. And I actually think this is overlooked because most people focus on the truth of it still ‘fortunately’ being a heterosexual couple. I think this might be a very good message, it definitely proves that you can’t help who you fall for, guy or girl or variation thereupon.
I suddenly realized this when watching Sungkyunkwan Scandal, and it made me appreciate it even more.
I mean, Sun Joon doesn’t hesitate for a minute to confess he is a homosexual in front of the entire student body just to protect his falsely accused friends. I found the way he accepted his own believed homosexuality was very progressive for someone in that historical time period.
Also, the story of course holds a great message for women. Women were never supposed to acquire any kind of scholarly status, but Yoon Hee is so talented even the King can’t deny her place in Sungkyunkwan even after he finds out she’s a woman. And the way she talks about wanting a free life and just do what she wants without having to obey specific rules or limitations just because she was born as a woman (sometimes she too didn’t have any choice in).
Now that I think of it, their way of thinking really is very progressive for that time. I’m not sure how accurate that is in terms of how progressive and open-minded people were at that time, but I liked it anyway.

I think I understand now why this story is called a classic. For me, it really has to do with it being ahead of its time. The main characters in the story are also ahead of their time and it has a really nice message with hope for a future where men and women can be equals. I wonder if the actual people from that time with this dream could be happy if they see how far we’ve come in 300 years.
People don’t blink about homosexuality and some of the most major academic scholars in the world are women. It’s all possible now. It wasn’t always like that.
I’d like it if this drama can be seen as a wink to create a bridge between the past and how far we’ve come in the future.

Stay tuned for my next review! Bye-bye~